“Can Amber stay with us forever?”
Derio slips a comforting arm around me in the dark.
“I hope so,” he says solemnly as he holds me close to him.
When we’re in bed, after we’ve made love, I roll over onto my side and he pulls me against him, spooning me.
“I will find a way for us,” he whispers gruffly in my ear. It sends a shiver down my back. “So you can stay.”
“Promise?”
He kisses the back of my head, breathing in deeply. “Promise.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I dream I am falling, as I always do. There is no scene that is set, no common reoccurrence, not this time. It’s just me falling into the black, into the abyss. I scream but it falls with me, sucked into the darkness. The terror is not knowing when you’re going to hit, when you’re going to land—when it’s going to hurt.
When I wake up, gasping for breath, I realize the dream is still going on. I look at the man beside me, sleeping soundly for once, and I know I’m awake and this is my life and I’m falling. Down, down, down.
I’m falling in love with Derio. My mind, body, and soul are tumbling over and over with my heart and he is the only thing in front of me. It’s just him. It’s always him. He invades my thoughts and my hopes and my beliefs. He’s the hand I’m always reaching for and the skin I itch to touch. He’s a boy of broken dreams and shattered years and I want so much to soothe his pain. I want to let him in. I want him to let me in. I want to heal this man and make him fall the way I am falling for him.
Sometimes I think I might be close. Sometimes he looks at me with such tenderness that I hope runs deep, straight into his heart. We need each other’s bodies, but I want him to need my soul. To take what I’m giving him and give it right back. I want to feel loved like I never have before.
But I don’t know how he feels. All I know is that I am falling in love with him. Every second, every minute, every day. It’s terrifying but it’s real. It’s the worst of my fears with the best of my dreams. And beneath it all is the inevitable crash. Because at the end of the day, whether I love him or he loves me, only one fact remains:
I can’t stay here.
I breathe in deeply and stare at Derio. We’re in his bedroom, wrapped in soft, thick blankets. The door to the patio is open and the sea breeze wafts in, whirred around by the fans overhead. Crickets provide an endless choir that I don’t even hear anymore.
I get out of bed, carefully untangling my legs from his so I don’t wake him and then walk out to the balcony. I don’t know what time of night it is but it must be deep in the middle of it. Everything is so calm. The sea is spread out before me like a sheet of velvet, dark ink blue that mirrors the sky. The moon is resting in the corner, nearly full and bathing the water in pale white.
Somewhere a dog barks and the crickets pause for a moment before starting up again. There is no other noise. The breeze in my hair is cool and carries the scent of sage and rosemary up the hillside.
I don’t want to leave.
I feel Derio’s presence before I hear him. I turn my head slightly to let him know I know he’s there and he wraps his arms around my stomach, holding me from behind. He presses his lips into the back of my head and I relax into his touch.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he murmurs.
“Bad dream,” I say.
“Oh no! What about?” He holds me tighter.
I wrap my fingers around his strong forearms and close my eyes. “Falling. That’s all.”
“Well, you are awake now and I have you,” he whispers. “You have nothing to worry about. And I meant what I said the other night. I will find a way to keep you here, just as long as you want to stay.”
I nod my head but my throat feels thick, my feelings choked up. I want to believe in him. I don’t want to think about anything else.
He turns me around and holds me so I’m pressed up against him. “I love to see those eyes,” he says, his own crinkled and kind at the corners as he peers down at me. “Ah, there they are. You are so beautiful, Amber, and you do not even know it. In a way, that makes you even more beautiful. You glow, even now, even in the dark.” He runs his palm over my head and cups the back of it protectively. “Mia leonessa.”
He leans down and kisses me. His lips are warm and soothing and so wonderfully familiar now. I crave them like I crave his voice, his touch, his energy.
He pulls away slowly, leaving my lips begging for more. “Come back to bed with me. Let me make love to you,” he murmurs. A long time ago I would have laughed if someone said that to me. But from Derio’s lips, it’s not funny. It’s honest and it’s real. I immediately turn to putty in his hands, my body responding to his voice like Pavlov’s dog.
He leads me back into the blue dark depths of the room, back to bed, where we make love until the horizon glows pink.
* * *
The children are playing in their game room, Derio is riding on his motorbike, and I’m trying to come up with something fun for today’s English lesson when my cell phone rings. It hasn’t rung for a very long time and the sound of it immediately fills my body with dread. I know who it is even before I look.
Yup. My parents.
I sigh, loudly. Actually, I almost vomit. This isn’t going to go over well. I’ve been ignoring their e-mails for weeks now, trying to push them, push reality, out of my life, but I guess they’ve reached their breaking point and actually need to speak with me.